Sgt. Nicholas Pyle began looking into mental health groups in 2023 after returning from a deployment to Syria for Operation Inherent Resolve. What he discovered was a familiar community, connected not just by military service but a love of gaming.
“It’s an escape,” the Michigan Army National Guard forward observer says of spending off-time with his new community. “It’s something you get home from work and you can dump these problems or you can chase this rank.”
Pyle, 22, grew up as a gamer and found not only the Army esports team but the Warrior GMR Foundation and the new web platform Gamers and Guardians.
“It’s just like-minded individuals,” Pyle says. “You can go to the VFW and American Legions, but I’ll be the youngest person there by 30 years. [If I] go this direction, I’m going to have like-minded individuals and probably the same age group. And not blocking anybody based on what they did during their service … The only criteria are you served and like video games.”
Online gaming, Pyle adds, is the “fastest way” for military community members like him to connect with friends around the world. And in his case, it led to attending events like TwitchCon in Las Vegas just to visit with fellow service members.
“[Gaming] allows you to have that sense of connectivity,” Pyle says, adding that it can help ease stress and anxiety, especially for those in the military.
Mental health experts increasingly agree. Recent studies show that video game-based interventions helped reduce “symptoms of depressive disorders,” according to a 2022 review published in Current Psychiatry Reports. And last year, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health reported that the online gaming community is helping prevent veteran suicides.
Gaming is very popular in the military and veteran communities. Half of veterans between 22 and 50 years old play PC or console games at least an hour per week, according to a survey (see below) released this year by Entertainment Software Association. Half of the veterans surveyed reported they served in combat, and 20% had been in the Guard.
Aubrey Quinn, ESA’s senior vice president of communications and public affairs, says studying the gaming motivations of service members and veterans was a way to help tell the story for a group with a “really unique life experience.” It also explored how video games show up in their lives.
The 86% of veterans who said in the survey that gaming is an outlet for stress and anxiety is larger than the nonveteran gamer community, Quinn says. And it refutes the view that gamers are all unemployed and lazy, she says.
ESA partnered on the survey project with Warfighter Engaged and Stack Up, which was founded in 2015 by Stephen “Shanghai Six” Machuga, a former one-time Army infantry officer. He says people, service members and veterans especially, open up when gaming.
Machuga explains how this happens by recounting a recent interview with the gaming news site Polygon, during which he was playing the new Battlefield game. He says he was “30% paying attention to the interview and 70% paying attention to the game.”
“It [was] literally like me trying to come up with answer while I’m trying to score a headshot or take cover, things like that,” Machuga says. “And it’s such a different experience that it was like, OK, clearly my walls were unintentionally brought down as far as all my defenses because I was focused on something else. Gaming is this great way to get people feeling comfortable.”
It’s also a great way to build relationships between veterans and civilians, he adds. “A civilian might not know what it’s like to deploy forward or go to boot camp or any of that stuff, but they know how to set up a Destiny raid or they know how to play Elden Ring,” Machuga says.
Over time, people would come into the Stack Up Discords and in between rounds start to ask each other about their about or why they seem distracted.
“It’s an alternative way to get people talking, to get them feel like they’re part of a community,” Machuga says. “Those are major counters for veteran suicide, isolationism and not feeling like a part of something.”
Stack Up officials have spoken with lawmakers in Washington about gaming as an “important part of the veteran conversation,” he says. “It’s not just a fun little goofy hobby that kids do in their basement anymore. It’s a practical platform that people utilize to escape from reality when things are getting tough.”
[Gaming] allows you to have that sense of connectivity.
—Sgt. Nicholas Pyle of the Michigan Army National Guard
The growing intersection of gaming and the military community is opening other doors, according to Pyle.
“There’s Gamers and Guardians specifically giving people the opportunity to compete and make money or find a passion, reignite a passion that could push them to a new career,” Pyle says. The nature of the traditional gaming industry didn’t allow such things, he adds.
Gamers and Guardians, a product of August Interactive, recently launched a military esports league. The inaugural event will occur in February 2026, says Sarah Kneller, an August Interactive co-founder.
The goal, Kneller says, is to have four divisions: a masters league for veterans; a pro tier for current service members and competitive branch teams; a service academy or collegiate league; and JROTC (high-school component).
Kristin Wood, who helped cofound August Interactive with Kneller, says the February event will also have a “show match” that features generals and admirals teaming with enlisted gamers and competitors from Gold Star Gamers.
There’s no cost to be involved with Gamers and Guardians, but players do need to go through the website ID.me verification.
Pyle has been involved with Gamers and Guardians since November, when the company flew him to Los Angeles for the organization’s inaugural event. Since then, he has joined the Gamers and Guardians Veterans Advisory Committee, which includes a range of veterans — from Pyle at 22 to Sean Nowlan, who’s in his 50s. Retired Gen. Joseph L. Votel, the U.S. Central Command commander from 2016 to 2019, is a senior advisor.
Kneller and Kristin Wood founded August Interactive in 2024. Kneller, a former Valve employee, says Wood and she met through a mutual friend and were both “circling around the realization” that if gaming is applied to a specific “pro-social outcome,” it could have an impact at scale.
“Gaming really creates borderless moments of joy … Gamers and Guardians was born out of belief that play, online play through gaming, can meet people in a place where they might be struggling,” Kneller says.
Woods says most mental health and suicide prevention efforts focus on people who are at “seven” on the 1-10 “mood scale,” where one is “I’m having a great day and 10 means I’ve decided it’s my last day.” Gamers and Guardians, she says, is designed to meet them at 1-7 to help “reduce the number of people who end up in those 7-10 circumstances.”
The group provides “routine points of play” while building a community that Kneller and Wood work with directly.
“Trust is not built overnight,” Kneller says. “We have to have real, vulnerable conversations … [and it’s] really important for us to start building trust and relationships in the community.”
In one conversation, a streamer and players discussed their own mental health in between discussing Apex Legends as they played, Kneller recalls.
“That is exactly the kind of conversation we hope to facilitate in these environments,” she says. “[We want to] give the time and place to talk about these things … that conversation is a shining example of de-stigmatizing vulnerability.”
In addition to Gamers and Guardians, Wood and Kneller plan to release their own first video game in 2027, but “didn’t want to wait to start trying to make a difference.” So, as they develop their own title, they’ve partnered with several military nonprofits, including USAA’s Face the Fight Coalition and the Warrior GMR Foundation.
Wood said about 20% of all games have military themes. But until August Interactive, there wasn’t a place that “considered the military as a market as a whole.”
“It’s really important to us to create a place where all of them can play,” Wood says, noting that their partners ensure a phone number is available for anyone who might need help.
It’s a practical platform that people utilize to escape from reality when things are getting tough.
—Stephen “Shanghai Six” Machuga, a former Army infantry officer and the founder and executive director of Stack Up
Wounded Warrior Project, which also has partnered with Gamers and Guardians, launched its gaming program and live streaming in 2000. Jackie Green, WWP’s livestreaming fundraising manager and an Army veteran, says the organization hosts about 2,000 gaming and streaming events annually.
“It’s almost like a virtual peer support group that’s centered around playing video games,” Green says. “And at first you’re talking about the structure of the game … [and] through the common interest of the game, you start to see those layers get peeled back up.”
Kennery Foster, a WWP peer support group leader and Guard veteran, hosts a monthly meeting for veterans, where they connect, talk about mental health, veterans benefits and what’s happening in WWP. But they also talk about how they stay connected through gaming.
“When I deployed with the National Guard’s 256th Infantry Brigade [headquartered in Louisiana], but we had units from New York, we had units from Arkansas. We had units from all over that deployed with us. And yes, for a year we were all real close. But after that year, what happens? You know, how do we connect?
“And fortunately, when we’re in Iraq, one of the things we could do was game. And so now through the internet, we’re able to continue to meet and talk and know what’s going on with your life or in your family’s life. Because yes, gaming is fun, but it’s an avenue for all the warriors to stay connected. It’s more than just playing a video game for us.”
Foster agrees with others that one of “the beauties” of gaming is that it provides veterans a platform to converse because, as he says, many “won’t just sit around and open up” in person.
“They’re behind their computer and they can actually talk and now they can speak freely because they don’t feel like anyone’s looking at them,” Foster says. “And mental health is very important to the Wounded Warrior Project. And we have lots of programs that can actually help our veterans with mental health. But if we don’t know you have mental health issues, we can’t help you. But by gaming, people feel free to talk about anything.”
Foster said he uses gaming as an information tool to help spread the word about mental health services that WWP provides.
“A lot of our Guard and Reserve population don’t know about the Wounded Warrior Project because they don’t think that they’re wounded,” Foster says. “When I was told about the Wounded Warrior project, the first thing I said was, ‘I’m not wounded. I’m not missing a limb. But my buddy who introduced me to the Wounded Warrior Project, who’s also a Guardsman, said, ‘No, stop right there. You do have wounds. Not every wound is visible.
KARI WILLIAMS is a freelance writer who specializes in military personnel matters. She can be reached via [email protected].
TOP PHOTO: Iraq and Afghanistan veterans share some camaraderie while playing video games at a Wounded Warrior Project Peer Support Group meeting in McAllen, Texas. WWP advocates gaming as a means to foster communication. (WOUNDED WARRIOR PROJECT)
Survey: Veterans say gaming plays an important role in their lives.
86%: Video games provide me with healthy outlet for stress and anxiety
81%: Playing video games has helped me cope with difficult times in my life
77%: I believe video games have had a positive impact on my life post-military service
77%: Video games provide a valuable means of connecting with others
76%: Video games provide a valuable means of staying connected with friends
74%: Video game communities have had a positive impact on my mental and emotional well-being
Source: Entertainment Software Association
